Good Morning!

It’s still hard for me to believe that adult women in the US could not vote less than 100 years ago. This is something to think about as we approach election day tomorrow. I can’t remember when an election was this important for women. There are many women running for office while women’s rights have been under continual assault for two years now. This is the first time in years–make that decades–that we’ve had one presidential candidate that refuses to go on record about equal pay for equal work and the Lily Ledbetter Act. The choices couldn’t be clearer.

This issue is over 100 years old. Belva Ann Lockwood ran for president in 1884 and 1889 as the candidate of the National Equal Rights Party. She had to petition to become the first woman to appear before the Supreme court in 1879. All of this was decades before women could even vote. She was also a victim of systemic voter fraud.

Here’s one dangerous state amendment in Florida which is billed as a “religious” freedom mandate but is really a way for churches to get their hands on state money and to project their values on every level of government. Florida’s Amendment 8 will likely show up in a state near year if it hasn’t already. It mandates taxpayer support of religious institutions.

“Under Amendment 8,” observed Sha­piro, “religious groups would have not only the right to seek taxpayer funding but the power to demand it in certain cases. Religious schools and other ministries of any and all religions could tap the public purse – my tax dollars and yours – and use those funds to promote their faith.”

He added, “Don’t buy the line that Amendment 8 is about protecting ‘faith-based’ social services. Those programs are in no danger. Religious groups in Florida can get tax funds to provide services to those in need – so long as they don’t use public funds to preach or proselytize.”

Shapiro opined that Amendment 8’s supporters also want to gain a foothold for school vouchers in the state. Currently, two provisions of the Florida Constitution have been interpreted to ban voucher subsidies for religious schools. If Amendment 8 passes, one of them will be removed.

Said Shapiro, “Some politicians are trying to use ‘religious freedom,’ which most Floridians fully support, as a cover for their agenda. They’d like to force all of us to subsidize various religions, whether we believe in those faiths or not. They want to give religious institutions special privileges.”

For most gay Minnesotans, particularly those who would like to marry longtime partners, passage of the constitutional amendment would put that dream further out of reach. Defeat of the measure would by a welcome but largely symbolic victory for gay couples because the state’s current gay marriage ban would still be in effect, denying same-sex couples who consider themselves married in all but name the same protections and privileges as legally married couples.

That means worrying about things like being denied hospital visits to an ailing partner; being unable to honor a loved one’s wishes after death; or being excluded from parenting rights in cases where an unmarried person adopts the child of a partner. Gay rights supporters say those are just a few of the legal privileges they are denied or may have to fight to assert because of their inability to marry.

During the long campaign over the constitutional amendment, the group working to pass it has stressed that it’s not trying to hurt gay couples. “Everybody has a right to love who they choose,” says the narrator in a commercial from Minnesota for Marriage, a coalition of religious and socially conservative organizations.

The group contends that male-female marriage is a centuries-old societal building block that benefits children, and that redefining it in law could lead to intrusions on religious liberty and the right of parents to control influences on their children.

Further information on other state ballot initiatives can be found at this link. California is voting on labeling of Genetically modified food. Arizona has an initiative that tries to block federal access to state natural resources. It’s important to read up on what might show up on your ballot given ALEC and the republican party’s need to decimate local governments, economies, and lives. Oregon and several states have marijuana initiatives. Most states have ballot initiatives that impact natural resources and wildlife.

For many folks, the issue is going to be access to their right to vote. Just think, Constitutional Amendments and the Voting Rights Act have secured our right to vote. Many states are trying to suppress the popular vote among the elderly, women, and minorities. Stories of rampant voter suppression are coming from all over the country. The one thing I always bring to the polls with me is banned now in New Mexico.

From New Mexico, Community Journalist George Lujan writes in that the Secretary of State has banned the League of Women Voters’ voting guide at early voting locations. The League’s guide is nonpartisan, and has been used to educate voters for years. According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, the guide, on the pretext that it amounts to electioneering, is now banned.

Nearly every city within 5 to 10 miles of this location — including Hialeah, Miami Springs, Sweetwater and Miami Lakes — has a substantial Republican voter registration advantage.

The most populous city among those is Hialeah where Republicans, powered by a large Cuban community, have an overwhelming registration advantage of nearly 20,000 voters. There will not be an opportunity for in-person absentee voting in downtown Miami or South Dade, where there are heavy concentrations of Democratic voters.

The decision to make the accommodation available was presumably made by Miami-Dade Election Supervisor Penelope Townsley. She is registered with no party affiliation but was appointed to her position by Republican Mayor Carlos Gimenez.

As the election season draws to a close, we’re beginning to see desperate campaigns do desperate things. Romney continues to harp on the President as an angry black man seeking revenge. Romney has the misguided notion that he some how is entitle to do and say what ever he wants to on the way to his anointment. That Romney sense of entitlement has never ceased to shock me. Romney twists other’ people’s words worse than his own.

In the final stretch of the campaign, suddenly there is a new storyline, with Mitt Romney harshly criticizing President Obama for telling a crowd of supporters that voting would be their “best revenge.” It all began when a crowd in Springfield, Ohio responded to Obama’s mention of Romney and Republicans by booing. The president tried to quieten them down, essentially saying their jeers were pointless. “No, no, no—don’t boo, vote! Vote! Voting is the best revenge.” (Video after the jump.) Romney seized on the remark: “Let me tell you what I’d like to tell you: Vote for love of country,” he told a crowd of supporters. He also released an ad about the remarks (watch after the jump). The message? As the conservative site Daily Caller succinctly puts it: “Romney is finishing his 2012 race by calling for love, change and hope, while President Barack Obama’s deputies are struggling to explain his call for ‘revenge.’”

It was an adlibbed line that for conservatives insist highlighted the worst of the president. “He really does think that opposing him is somehow dirty pool, and that ‘revenge’ is the appropriate treatment for those who fail to bow to the mighty Barack,” writes John Hinderaker in Power Line. Yet for others, the way in which the Romney camp rushed to seize on what was obviously a play on the familiar saying “living well is the best revenge” is “one last sustained expression of that contempt for the electorate” Romney has displayed in the past, writes the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent. In the Atlantic, James Fallows wonders whether it’s even “conceivable that [Romney] actually believes Obama was talking about revenge-voting as if it were basically like ‘revenge sex?’”

Obama was merely encouraging people to go to the polls, yet Romney somehow twisted the words, even if he left a basic question unanswered: Revenge for what? “Suddenly, we are in the rhetorical space of class warfare,” points out The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson. Although talking of revenge may be a new twist, it’s merely another way in which Romney has accused those who oppose him of resenting his success.

Meanwhile, poll-after-poll shows a gender gap, a Hispanic Gap, a black gap, and an age gap in voting patterns. It’s hard not to notice that every one recognizes what’s at stake. The Romney way-back machine takes most of us back to places that most of us fought to get out of. Be sure to hang on as we live blog the returns tomorrow and the latest in voter suppression efforts today. This pretty well sums up the Romney future for all of us: Romney staff refusing to let frostbitten children leave PA rally.

This is happening right now at Mitt Romney’s rally in Pennsylvania. Apparently it’s freezing, and Romney’s staff is refusing to let rally-goers leave. People are begging reporters for help.

Absolutely incredible.

No, it’s quite credible. This is a group of people that wants complete control of what goes on in every American Woman’s Uterus. This is a group that will say anything–including scaring workers about their jobs–to score political points. This is a group that sends its VP candidate to re-rinse clean pots over the protests of charity owners and pays for a few boxes of canned goods over the requests of the Red Cross just to provide photo ops. This one man’s sense of entitlement and republican ideology will always leave all of us frostbitten in the cold. Just VOTE for any one but a Republican this election. It is important. I don’t want to see us all out there on the melting ice floes with endangered polar bears.

Great but frightening post, dak. And I was feeling upbeat when I finally went to sleep last night.

I watched MSNBC all day yesterday. Rachel’s show, as always was a standout. She showed a clip from the 80s of Paul Weyrich – the guy who started the assault on “the little people.” He was talking to Republicans about limiting access to voting for those who generally vote Democratic.

The campaign to tip the scales for the 1% has been going on, mostly behind the scenes, for many, many years. Incrementally, the Right has stripped most Americans of their freedoms, liberties & rights – all the things the Right claims to hold dear. I don’t doubt that they hold them dear, but only for the worthy. The worthy, of course, are the rich, white & males of the country. The rest of us, the rabble, need to STFU and do as we’re told. The advent of Faux News has done the most damage by spreading the propaganda to the unsuspecting & susceptible public who have been dumbed down by the undercutting of our public education system. Personally, I think the 99% are viewed as resources, much like coal/oil/natural gas, to be used as income sources. As consumers to buy the crap they dispense. As workers, we make profits for “the company.” A large percentage of the 99% (larger than anywhere else in the world) are incarcerated & work as cheap labor & profit for the private prison companies who house them. Women are the ground in which the seeds are planted to grow a new crop of workers. All of this is covered up by convincing the 99% that their reward is not here on Earth, but waits for them in heaven. Jeezus is comin’ to get you & take you home.

It’s time for the serfs to rise up & throw off the yokes of enslavement these elitists dream of. With Barack Obama at the helm of this country they fear a slave rebellion.

Like President Johnson predicted when he was signing the civil rights bill, the southern vote would be lost for 25 years, or a generation. By the ’80s, Weyrich picked up on this block of wins for the republicans and began, with the churches, to solidify wins up to now. The democrats have to respond better than nominating a black man for president for the white guilt vote and the black nearly 100% vote. The party can harp on the potential of freedoms being taken away by the republicans as we’ve seen this election and try to heal and strengthen the coalitions. They must rethink and repackage their platform, not necessarily change it. If it’s not too late, that is, because now God is a republican advisor.

Allow me to add: the dems didn’t support and win with the best candidate in 2008.

I don’t disagree about 2008, peregrine. I have to admit, though, that I think Hillary won in the long run. She’s been the best SOS in my lifetime. She’s flourished in that position, whereas being Prez would have been daily torture. Taking on the disaster of the Bush years & trying to clean up the mess & help the nation recover – much like after a natural disaster – was & is a monumental task. I have no doubt she could have done the job, but it’s a job I wouldn’t wish on anyone. And I don’t doubt that the Right would have gone after her just as diligently as they have after Obama. She too would have been treated as a usurper to the Republican Throne. It’s their birthright, after all.

“Allow me to add: the dems didn’t support and win with the best candidate in 2008″

I agree, we could go all the way back to the theft of election 2000 with that, but the coulda-woulda-shoulda perspective isn’t a way I can look at life or live life. If I did I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I’m guessing that almost everyone feels the same. We have to play the hand we have, not the hand we wish we had. As Bill Clinton said in his convention speech, no president, not him nor his predecessors, could have done a better job with the economic situation than Obama. I’ve thought that for quite a while. I know you have too. You and I have actually lived every economic downturn for decades, nothing even touches what happened at the end of 2008. Nothing, in my lifetime, compares to the circumstance of this country when Obama took office. I don’t always agree with him. I especially disagreed with him during the healhcare fight because I wanted Universal Single Payer. I hoped he would get us out of Afghanistan sooner. I have 2 loved ones in Afghanistan right now, so I have skin-flesh&blood in that debate, but I know he did a much better job than John McCain would have done. McCain would have maintained our presence in Iraq and we wouldn’t have a pullout date in Afghanistan. I think in that regard that Obama handled the Iraq-Afghanistan situation much like Hillary would have handled it. Overall, Obama has done a decent job.

That’s the foolishness of our times, isn’t it?: in my opinion, we don’t win with the best candidate, we win with the one that will win. Yes, Connie, I agree, but they would have much less to have drilled down on. My point above is that, even if the Democratic Party wins the presidency tomorrow, they must not rest, but must work on ways to unlock many voters from the grip of the republicans. I don’t have any answers yet.

Instead of running his first marathon, Akil Defour of Brooklyn climbed 20 flights of stairs in a building without power or heat in Far Rockaway, Queens, to deliver water, blankets and peanut butter sandwiches.

“I knew I wanted to volunteer after they canceled the marathon,” said Defour, 30, who put in five hours of work with his running team. “We decided it would be easier for us athletes to go up and down the buildings.”

At the end of early voting on Saturday, 49.7% of all registered African American voters in NC had cast their votes. And of those votes, 61% came from WOMEN. By contrast, turnout among White voters was only 38.7%.

You guys are all lucky that we are only “cyberspace friends” and not having to spend time with me in person! I am a basket case these days! Grumpy and hyper, it is not a pretty scene.

I don’t remember ever feeling this “antsy” before an election but then I have not witnessed the hatred and vitriol that has been present these last 4 years when so much obstruction has been forced upon the nation by this lying creeps. From McConnell to Trump to Coulter to Romney to Rush, the lies gushing forth – and being rewarded to a large extent – are mind boggling.

The “war on women” is so extreme but to discover so many voters willing to support this agenda is beyond explanation. The possibility of losing social safety nets and the loss of even more of the environment is tremendous. The assault on democracy is happening as we speak yet they keep insisting that the polls numbers show a dead heat in so many races.

In one respect I am glad that this thing is finally coming to a close but in another respect I say this with a measure of dread towards the outcome. The uncertainty is driving me to distraction because I am unable to comprehend how this shallow man could be this close to victory after watching his rise based on who and what he is.

If he and his cohorts manage to pull this out then “truth” will be the loser going forward as the majority of the public will have given consent.

I’m a mess to be sure. Think Debbie Downer (one of my favorite SNL characters) when I hear the word “close”.

Just glanced at a post by RD where she declares that a Romney win wouldn’t bother her in the least. Really? Four years of dismantling every safety net in sight and she is unconcerned because of the “message” this will send to the Dems?

The Dems will be helpless for the next 4 years while women, children, the sick and disabled will find themselves thrown to the wolves in a display of ideology while seniors and those approaching that age lose security in their advancing years.

And whose to say that we would not get another 4 years when voter suppression does not reach a higher level since they have had more time to “tweak” the system?

Sitting on the “high horse” of condesencion without considering what may, and more than likely will be achieved, is putting on blinders.

The surest way out of this is to vote against this ideology and the mini fascism it will bring in its wake.

These guys mean business and Romney is their guy who will help them do just that.

Pat, do you have any favorite discs or playlists to listen to? In the car, I listened to one of my favorite songs over and over again and I’ve got a new attitude. Four sexy young men were singing in Italian, “Regresa A MI” (“Unbreak My Heart”). Please treat yourself well.

The Buckeye State has seen a rather remarkable string of wins for voting rights supporters. Federal courts have ordered the expansion of early voting and saved the votes of potentially thousands of voters who would have been disenfranchised because of poll worker errors, such as sending a voter to the wrong table to vote because the worker cannot tell an odd from an even number. Even more remarkably, the decisions from Democratic and Republican judges alike have relied on a very broad reading of Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court case that ended the 2000 Florida recount in favor of George W. Bush. In fact, if President Obama narrowly ekes out a win in Ohio, he might have the conservative Supreme Court justices from 2000—Chief Justice Rehnquist, and Justices Scalia and Thomas—to thank for the victory.

Had a elderly couple come to my house this weekend, and I told them good luck with their church, and I swear they wouldn’t go away, they like pushed in and asked about my dog……….and finally I told them I had to go………….It’s people like that driving me nuts too.

She is hilarious because she is normally very refined. But when it comes to the Repubs she becomes Sybil!

I remember we were out to dinner one night a few years ago when my son mentioned that he “kind of liked Scott Brown”. Lucky for him she put down her knife and fork before she launched into a rant or I would have had one less child to buy Christmas presents for.

They vacation in Maine near Kennebunkport and she has been known to throw rocks at the Bush compound.

Her 2 girls are her top priority and the “war on women” has her as nuts as I am when it comes to these issues.

My son, who did not grow up in an ethnically charged background, admits his eyes were opened when dealing with the Italian blood that is Kate when she is riled. He says he learned “to duck” especially when she gets wound up over poltics.

Romney paid no taxes for 14 YEARS! The Romneys receive cash payments each year from the trust at the LDS’s church? Something is crooked here. The church should own the trust and receive payments from it, not the Romneys. What a sweet heart deal! grrrrrrr — Romney loves this country so much that he doesn’t support it with tax payments, or military service and children’s service, or no presidential run? The red queen declares his loss tomorrow.

The offshore fiscal routes Mitt Romney uses also go through The Netherlands. The private equity fund Bain Capital, in which the presidential candidate participates, uses the Dutch route to evade about 80 million euro ($102 million) of taxes on dividends.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney profits from the fiscal route the private equity fund Bain Capital uses via the Netherlands. For the American Bain, founded by Romney, the Netherlands is a part of the large network of international holding companies and trust funds.

By routing his investment in 2004 in the Irish pharmaceutical company Warner Chilcott through the Netherlands, Bain manages to evade dividends and capital gains taxes. Since the shares have been kept in the Netherlands, about $389 million in dividends have been paid, and Bain has sold shares for about $334 million in Warner Chilcott shares.

This has been found out by Follow the Money for the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, by looking at documents sent to the SEC, by studying tax return forms submitted by Romney, by studying confidential Bain documents leaked by the techblog Gawker, and by data from the Dutch Chamber of Commerce.

Romney paid no taxes from 1996 – 2009.
47% of Americans pay no taxes, according to Mr. Romney.
Would that make Mr. Romney part of that 47%?
Also according to Mr. Romney, that 47% will never vote for him. They’ll be voting for Prez Obama.
Does this mean that Mr. Romney will be voting for Prez Obama?

I’m so glad this election is almost over. I’ll bet Sutter Brown, First Dog of California, agrees. The sweet pooch has been traveling up and down the state to drum up support for Proposition 30. I smile every time I see a Facebook or Twitter update from him.

Steve Schmidt (Republican Consultant and former McCain Adviser) said on MSNBC this morning (paraphrasing) that after this election the GOP is going to have to get together and decided how to get rid of the “whackadooodles”.

“If I hear anybody say it was because Romney wasn’t conservative enough I’m going to go nuts. We’re not losing 95% of African-Americans and two-thirds of Hispanics and voters under 30 because we’re not being hard-ass enough.”

Good day! I can see by reading that everyone here is having the “anxious” as I am. But I’m trying to think good thoughts. :) And spending time just finding funny media reactions because there is at least one a minute. Here is the latest from Halprein and Mrs. Greenspan, Obama’s crowds are getting smaller and Mitt the Twit, his are sooo big.
Check out the picture.

One thing I can predict with confidence is that Republicans are going to respond to this year’s election coverage by creating lots and lots of polling firms in time for 2014 and 2016.

Republicans know that Nate Silver and other poll nerds repeatedly threw cold water on their pro-Romney narratives by citing poll averages; if this is the future of campaign coverage, Republicans will feel the need to mess with those poll averages by generating far more raw polling data than they do now.
[…]
Right-wing news sources and pundits will point to poll aggregators who (unlike Nate Silver) average all poll numbers without assessing “house effects” (i.e., pro-Democratic or pro-Republican skews). Those aggregators will be said to be the honest, legitimate, unbiased ones, unlike Silver and his biased liberal soul mates. (Mainstream journalists may well fall for this.)

I think Silver and his fellow quants will be vindicated tomorrow, but this may be their last hurrah. The numbers they work with are going to be hopelessly politicized in the future.

Ralph…Maria Teresa Kumar is on MSNBC and she is saying what we’ve been saying for a couple of months, that there is a large segment of the population that isn’t being polled or polled properly, Latinos, young voters and young mothers who don’t have landlines. The only cellphones that are included in any of the polling are cellphone users who also have landlines. I don’t know how they get access to those numbers, but they do.

I’ve been following the RAND poll closely in the National Election because they poll through the internet. Again I don’t know how they qualify those people, but I think the internet and cellphone only users, will have to be included in future polling. I think that the biggest lesson of this years polls will be that you can’t poll properly if you’re not getting a good sample of minorities and the 18-30 group.

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